Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
To hold danger within your grasp and sniff the darkness as it settles around you, invading your sense of self as it clutches at the significance of metropolis, the noir and the steady beat which makes the City Night one of the more alluring and vulnerable aspects of living; to be immersed and aloft by the neon light as bars sing with the sound of sirens pulling in their clientele and steady stream of soft serenaded menace is to know that you are alive.
To find yourself within the heartbeat of the City Night is to feel the presence of the sound that drives the jeopardy and the glamour in equal measure, to allow yourself to fall into the arms of exposure and glittering shadow is understand the complexity of emotions that others will resist, but to which you instinctively feel they will soon fall into the saloon of music and heartbeats, sit by your side and cheer the night’s heroes on stage onward.
Taking to the City Night stage for another round of keenly observed shots and precision is Savoy Brown, and in their latest album, City Night, the loneliness one can feel in a strange town as the dusk gives way to seeing stars, is replaced with roaring fulfilment, the strut and the stride of purpose having replaced the stagger and limped dragged appeal to which others believe is enough to see them through the darkest times.
Across songs such as the pulsating creativity of the openers Walking On Stones and Don’t Hang Me Out To Dry, the symbolism of Red Light Mama, Neighbourhood Blues and Superstitious Woman, and the excellence of Selfish World, Payback Time and Conjure Rhythm, Savoy Brown’s Kim Simmonds, Pat DeSalvo and Garnet Grimm don’t just allow the listener into this urban sprawl of concrete ideas and monuments to the genre, they insist that they take in the scenery, that they live in each building erected and meet all who inhabit this strange but absorbing world.
An utterly superb album, one which allows a single but perfectly illuminating light in the mind of the listener to glisten against the darkness of others.
Savoy Brown release City Night on Friday 7th June via Quarto Valley Records.
Ian D. Hall